"Justice in Jeopardy: Malaysia 2000" is not pertinent if Rais repudiates his  1995 book  "Freedom under Executive Power in Malaysia" as totally irrelevant and inconsequential

---

Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang 

---

"Justice in Jeopardy: Malaysia 2000" will not be pertinent and does not require any government attention or concern if Rais repudiates his  1995 book  on the conflict between the rule of law and executive power in Malaysia "Freedom under Executive Power in Malaysia - A study of executive supremacy" as totally irrelevant and inconsequential.

I had always regarded  "Freedom under Executive Power in Malaysia - A study of executive supremacy" an important  study of great honesty and integrity about how Malaysia degenerated into a semi-democracy, where to quote Rais, "Rule by law and not rule of law supersedes and takes priority in most aspects of ruling the people" producing "a culture of fear in an already non-critical society".

I was not the only one to think highly of Rais’ book.

Former Lord President, Tun Suffian, has this to say about Rais’ book:
 

"This book shows how true it is that a man does not become a dictator suddenly in one day. It details how gradually the executive in Malaysia has over the years step by awful step succeeded in dismantling the checks and balances written into the Constitution by the country’s liberal founding fathers, and gathered virtually unlimited power into its own hands…

"Our politicians who have long been in office think they have the voter’s mandate to do anything they wish however unfair, regardless of the feeling of the public whose mandate they say they have…they address the public as if they are talking to servants…

"This is an important book because it is written not by a professional oppositionist perpetually moaning about the bad and ignoring all the good things done by the Government.  Its author was an insider, a loyal and close supporter of the ruling coalition for almost all his working life…He had a grandstand view of what was going on and saw a working democracy slowly but surely sliding into a dictatorship."

Another former Lord President, Tun Salleh Abas, has this to say about Rais’ book:
 

"Dr. Rais Yatim should be congratulated for undertaking this valuable task of studying the long process of conflict between the supremacy of law and the demands for absolute power by the executive in Malaysia. His analysis on the suspension and removal of judges in 1988 which is a shock to the nation…his study and analysis on mass arrest and detention of political opponents without trial by the executive…provided abundant materials for interesting reading and further studies by those interested in Malaysian constitutional and legal history.

"No one would disagree with Dr. Rais Yatim’s conclusion that this conflict has resulted in the executive now occupying the pinnacle of power, making everything else subservient to it."

Rais fully agreed with the views expressed by the two former Lord Presidents, about "a working democracy slowly but surely sliding into a dictatorship" and how the executive, "now occupying the pinnacle of power, making everything else subservient to it" not only because both  these laudatory endorsements were printed in the backcover jacket of Rais’s book, but they  faithfully represented Rais’ conclusions of his study.

Describing the Internal Security Act as "A Tool for Authoritarianism", Rais ended his chapter entitled "The Dictates of Political Supremacy in the 1988 Judicial Crisis" with the following Conclusion:
 

"The decision to remove Salleh and his two colleagues was a political one although the modus operandi might seem to have followed constitutional arrangement. The removal of the Lord President, unprecedented as it was in the free democratic world, stands out as the biggest scandal that Malaysia has thus far faced in the contest of the executive wanting to assert supremacy. The whole episode of removing the Lord President was based on the desire of the executive to have an untrammelled say in the direction the judiciary should take in future.  The message is clear: Judges are only allowed to interpret the law in the way that the executive had determined through the language passed by Parliament."

Rais was very categorical and definitive in his book not only that Malaysia had lost the independence of the judiciary, but that the future for the rule of law and human rights in Malaysia is "dismal". (Preface).

 "Justice in Jeopardy: Malaysia 2000" is an update of Rais’ study and Rais can only dismiss the international legal community’s terrible indictment of the system of justice if he repudiates his own book.

As author of  "Freedom under Executive Power in Malaysia", Rais should have the intellectual and political honesty to recognise the importance and integrity of "Justice in Jeopardy: Malaysia 2000" and initiate the process as the Cabinet Minister responsible for law and justice for the restoration of a just rule of law and a truly independent judiciary.

The first step is to make copies of  "Justice in Jeopardy: Malaysia 2000" available to all Members of Parliament and open up a nation-wide debate starting with a special debate on the subject before the adjournment of the current meeting of Parliament.

(12/4/2000)